The Cloak
by Webster
Summary: What is attacking hikers outside of town?  And what will the brothers do when Dean falls victim to the same monster? Hurt Dean, heroic Sam


"So, what've you got?" Dean began, as his brother sat down across the table.

"Four disappearances over the last six months, all of them people who liked to hike outside of town."

"Which we knew before we even got here. Anything else?"

"Nothing. No bodies, no witnesses, no connection between the victims, no strange behavior before they disappeared, and no records of similar events in the past. Tell me you found something."

"Nada. Looks like we're hiking tomorrow."

Dean moved down the trail silently. They had swept the larger trails together without finding anything, then split up to cover more ground on the smaller ones.

White hot pain tore through him, blotting out everything but the moment. When the glare backed off, Dean was lying crumpled on the ground. He tried to straighten out, and the blinding pain struck again.

The second time, Dean moved only his eyes. The sun peeked down at him from between green leaves overhead. Normal. In front of him was a row of maple trees. Normal. Lower down, he could see a bush, covered with bright red berries. Still normal. Dean dared to move his neck slightly. Lower still was his right knee and _a piece of metal stuck through his lower leg._

Okay, NOT normal.

Trying not to jolt the... injury, Dean wiggled the cellphone out of his pocket. With the press of four buttons, a preset text message warned Sam that he needed help. Dean stared at the phone blankly. Sam needed more to go on than SOS, but the screen swam in front of his eyes and he couldn't remember what he'd meant to say. The phone slipped from his hand.

No. Dean HAD to figure this out. Carefully, he lifted his head and stared at the metal. It stuck into his calf, just above the top of his high boot. Two shiny arcs pinned his leg between them, and teeth jutted out from the arcs, holding him in place. The arcs were attached to something on the ground, something he couldn't make out through the leaves. His head dropped back to the ground as he struggled to understand what had happened.

A bear trap. He was caught in a fucking bear trap.

As Dean stared at his trapped leg, breath coming short and hard, a huge grey wolf padded out of the undergrowth. It approached him, then threw back its head and howled. As it lowered its muzzle, the wolf shivered, its shape blurring before Dean's muddled gaze. He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again quickly. The wolf was gone, leaving only a tall, dark-haired man wearing a wolf hide around his shoulders.

The man stepped forward and stared at Dean hungrily, kneeling to run a finger up the trapped man's cheek.

"Strong," he murmured. "Very strong. Inside as well as out. With your strength in my limbs..." The man shivered in anticipation.

Dean pushed through the fog of shock in his mind and began tugging at the knife in his sleeve. Unfortunately, the enemy was watching him intently.

Though the man looked slender, he caught Dean's arms easily. Holding both of Dean's hands in his left, the skinwalker drew a leather strip and bound his prey's hands together. Though Dean struggled, the enemy had a grip like a demon. Either the shock had taken all the strength from Dean's body, or else skinwalkers had unfair advantages.

Probably both, because didn't it just always work that way?

The man reached out for the trap and jiggled it, just a little.

Dean opened his mouth and screamed. If Sam was close enough to hear, it was smart, not wimpy. And if Sam wasn't, he probably wouldn't have much chance to regret it.

With all their attention on one another, the gunshot caught both men by surprise. The bullet caught the man right in the center of the chest, sending him staggering back. Instead of falling down, however, the man turned and ran into the woods with no sign of pain or weakness.

Letting the enemy go for the moment, Sam lowered his weapon and squatted down beside his brother, studying the trap. "You got any idea what that was?"

Dean pressed his teeth together to keep from whimpering, then gasped out two words.

"Skinwalker. Wolf."

Sam left off working at the trap and dug in his bag. When hunting an unknown enemy, they carried as many types of weapons as possible, including a small jar of white ash, made from the bones of a deer. Buffalo might be better, but they'd never gotten their hands on one. The important thing was that it was an animal fit for hunting and slaughter. According to legend, the skinwalker gained his dark powers through hunting, killing, and skinning unfit animals, and a wolf hide such as this being wore was strictly forbidden among the Navajo.

Sam found the jar, pulled the clip out of his pistol, dusted the bullets in the ash, and slammed it back into place. His eyes never left the trail.

With the pistol still gripped in his right hand, Sam looked at the trap again.

"I've never seen a trap like this one before. It's got some kind of... lock or something. And it's big, almost like a bear trap but taller. A normal bear trap should have just caught your boot."

"Not for bear." Dean forced out. "For people. Fucking skinwalkers."

A brown rat ran past them, heading north. The speed suggested it was fleeing a predator. Sam continued to look at the trap, but he squeezed Dean's good ankle and lifted his pistol a little higher. His lips pressed together.

A true wolf would have approached without a sound that Sam could hear, but the skinwalker must have been new to his abilities. The rustling of dry leaves clearly announced his approach, from directly behind Sam. Dean, feigning unconsciousness, watched through half-lidded eyes.

Sam spun on the balls of his feet, remaining low to the ground. As soon as he saw the skinwalker, wearing his wolf form once again, Sam fired. All three bullets caught the wolf in its center of mass, and it fell to the ground. Pistol still extended, Sam ran toward it and rolled it onto its back. It whined, once, then lay still.

A small pouch lay on the wolf's back, secured around its middle with a strap. Sam grabbed it absently, checked the wolf for a pulse. There were four bullet wounds in its chest, three wide-open and smoking, one half-healed and peculiarly low on a four-footed animal. It matched the wound Sam had placed on the man just a few minutes before.

The wolf was plainly dead, but, just to be sure, Sam drew his silver knife and cut its throat and hamstrings before covering it and the blood pool with a leafy branch. Salting and burning would have to wait.

Sam wiped off his hands on some fallen leaves as well as he could, then finished the job with an alcohol wipe from the medical kit. Though he despised the sight of the trap pinning his brother's leg, he knew it would have to be removed carefully. He pulled out dressings and located sticks long enough to splint Dean's leg from heel to thigh. Normally Sam would have just used a shotgun, but from the gray look of Dean's skin, there was a hospital trip in their future, and hospitals tended to frown on firearms, even as emergency medical equipment.

As tight as the trap gripped Dean, it was possible an artery had been nicked, so Sam wrapped a tourniquet just above his knee. Finally, he was ready to open the trap. The lock puzzled him, though, it wasn't at all a standard design, and Dean was the better locksmith. Then, Sam remembered the pouch he'd lifted off the dead wolf. Inside, he found a wallet and a ring of keys, including one that looked as if it might fit. Then, Sam folded Dean's arms over his chest, straightjacket style, and sat down on top of them. Sam leaned forward, bracing the knee against his chest, and opened the trap.

Dean strained against his brother's weight, then went limp, all without making a sound. Sam took advantage of his unconsciousness to straighten his knee and splint the leg in place. Once the splints were arranged, Sam slowly loosened the tourniquet.

Blood oozed and flowed, but it didn't spurt. Sam sagged back on his heels with relief.

He quickly adjusted the tension on the splints. There was no way to check for a pulse in Dean's foot with the boot on, but the wrappings were firm and tight without digging in anywhere that Sam could see, and the pulse behind Dean's knee was fine. The splint would do.

The next question was how to evacuate his brother. With the weapons, blood, dead wolf and trap strewn about the area, Sam couldn't just call 911. But Dean couldn't be carried far, not without a proper stretcher and at least one other person to help carry it.

Sam dug out the map. Although they were several miles from town, the forest preserve was frequented by many visitors. As Sam suspected, there was a dirt road just a few hundred feet away, and, if he brought the car there, Sam could manage to get his brother that far without further help.

Still, it would take at least twenty minutes to run back to the car and drive it around, and Sam hated the idea of leaving his brother alone and unconscious. What if he woke up?

Maybe there was a way to keep Dean company and get help at the same time. Sam dug the headset out of his pocket and set it in Dean's ear, then called Dean's phone with his own. Sam set off, running evenly, talking into the open line. "I'll be back in a few minutes, Dean..."

"You have a displaced fracture of the fibula," the doctor pointed to an x-ray. "Fortunately, I was able to reduce the fracture without surgery, unfortunately, the severe swelling and multiple puncture wounds mean you can't have a hard cast yet. I've covered the leg with an open splint, but it isn't as stable. Come back in a week to have it replaced with a cast. Until then, you need to avoid movement or jostling as much as possible. I'll write you a prescription for a pain medication, take one every six hours."

Dean had been in the hospital for twenty-six hours and seventeen minutes, almost ten of those hours fully conscious, and he was practically vibrating with eagerness to be elsewhere.

The cotton, plaster and elastic contraption covering almost his entire left leg was making a bit hard to sneak out, however, as was the IV still stuck in his arm.

"So I can go now?"

"As soon as the last bag of vancomycin runs through. If the wounds get infected, it could very easily spread inside the bone, and that's bad news."

Sam entered at the last words and frowned seriously. "What does he need to do to make sure that doesn't happen?"

"As I was telling your brother, keep the splint dry and make sure he takes his medicine on time. The pain medicine is almost as important as the antibiotics, we don't want the swelling to get out of control."

Sam nodded, eating up the damned doctor's every word.

Dean raised his head, then let it flop back down on the plastic pillow. "How about you find me some damned pants, genius?"

"Pants, Dean? Seriously?"

Two hours later, Dean was headed out to his car along with a gorgeous dark-haired girl. Which, most of the time, was exactly where he wanted to be after a hunt, but there were just a few things off this time around. For one, she wasn't walking beside him with a hand sneaking around his waist, she was behind him, pushing his wheelchair, while he held on to the crutches on his lap. Instead of a warm, friendly beer buzz, he was riding the fog of surgical anesthetics mixed with the sickness of heavy antibiotics. When they reached the car, they wouldn't be crawling in together, she'd be putting him in the back seat before Sam drove him away. Worst of all, Dean was wearing Sam's old gym shorts, bright red and with the waistband so stretched out he wasn't sure he wanted to risk standing up in them.

Come to think of it, Dean wasn't sure he wanted to risk standing up, period. He'd been on crutches before, but balancing with the bad leg immobilized at the knee was a new one on him.

Still, he'd manage. And the doctor had promised the hard cast would end below the knee.

When the orderly shut the car door, he turned to Sam.

"Skinwalker?"

"Salted and burned last night, after you were asleep."

"Now?"

"Back to the motel. We should be able to squeeze another week out of the card you put the room on."

"Sam-"

"You think you're hunting like this? Once you're casted we can head to Bobby's, I called him and asked."

"Why-"

"We can't go now. I want the same doctor to put the cast on, and you can't travel until then anyway, it'll hurt too much."

"Doesn't."

"I know it doesn't hurt now, you're still pumped full of the good stuff. Talk to me tomorrow."

Dean gave up and scowled out the window.

Three days later, Dean was still scowling.

"Come on, Sam, what crawled up your panties?"

Sam left off his reading long enough to glare back at him.

"Seriously, what's bugging you? Looking for another job?"

Sam looked pointedly at his brother's surgical splint. Then he sighed. "I'm not totally sure the last job is finished."

"Shot, salted and burned. Sounds pretty finished to me."

"Andrew Collins is dead, but I'm not sure that's the end of it. Think about it, the guy couldn't have been a skinwalker long. He relied too much on sight in wolf-shape, when, by human standards, wolves are half-blind. And he completely ignored what his ears and nose must have been telling him. Says right here in Dad's journal; 'After a few years of shifts, it forgets how to be human. The walker doesn't just wear the skin, he lives in it.'"

"So?"

"So how did he learn skinwalker magic?"

Sam had burned the man's wallet along with the rest of him, but not before recording his name and address. A quick search of police records revealed no missing persons report. Given that Sam had personally disappeared Collins a full four days before, that was a little peculiar all by itself.

"Still," Dean commented. "It'll be a lot easier for us to get in to his place if the police aren't watching it."

"Us?"

"It's an empty apartment, Sam, not a creepy cave or something."

"I'll check it out first."

"Fine," Dean said, reaching for his crutches.

"I know you're on some pretty interesting pain medication, but how does me checking it out first imply you coming along?"

"I'll wait in the car." _Where I'll hear if anything goes wrong._

Sam kept the pistol out of sight as he entered the brick building, counting. Three steps up to the outer door, then two more inside... Dean _should_ be up to that. Luckily, the apartment was on the ground floor. Sam scanned the short hallway. Welcome mats, apartment numbers, a painted-over mezzuzah, there was nothing of note, so Sam checked his gloves and opened the door of Number 14. Pulling the pistol out, he entered the apartment and sighed loudly.

Apparently, skinwalkers were real slobs.

It took only a few minutes to clear the small apartment and go back for Dean. As usual, Dean refused assistance getting out of the car, but when they reached the stairs, Sam didn't bother offering help, he just slid into place behind his brother. Despite a few ominous wobbles, they reached the apartment in one piece, and Dean made a beeline for the couch. His toes were already swelling, even after such a short time standing. Sam dug out a pillow and ice pack for Dean's leg, and Dean began sorting through the papers on the coffee table. Biting back a shiver at how casually they'd invaded the home of a man they'd just killed, Sam turned his attention to the bookshelves.

Four hours later, Sam had examined every book on the shelves. He'd searched under the bed, finding nothing but ten-inch dust bunnies. The linen closet revealed a spilled, dried up bottle of shampoo, and the back of the bookshelf a nest of mice, looking long abandoned. The mice wouldn't stay in a den that smelled of wolf. Still, he found nothing that even suggested black magic.

Each collection of papers, he brought to Dean, who scowled and tapped his fingers and hummed tunelessly, but sorted through every last one. "The guy was out of work and in debt up to his eyebrows," Dean announced. "Might have something to do with why he became a skinwalker, but I've got no idea how. Maybe he kept his magic stuff somewhere else."

"He might have had a base out in those woods." Sam nodded.

"I don't think we're going to find anything more here." Dean pushed the coffee table out of the way, put his left hand on both crutches and levered himself up, then headed for the kitchenette. "Wonder if he had any beer?"

"Dean, you're not gonna... Dean?"

Dean stood in front of the open fridge door, staring. Sam walked up behind him and blinked. "I guess no one would look for a grimoire in the vegetable tray."

Sam grabbed his backpack and stuffed the book inside. Underneath was a notebook and a set of ritual items.

"Bobby should be able to help us dispose of this stuff safely," Dean pointed out. "Of course, that still doesn't tell us how he got it."

"We may never find out. Come on, it's time for your meds, and you have to eat something first."

"Shut up, Sam."


End file.
